Between birds and humans : the design of the encounter

Between birds and humans:

The design of the encounter

by

Giovanni Bellotti

Bachelor in Architecture, IUAV University of Venice, 2010 Master in Architecture, IUAV University of Venice, 2013

Submitted to the Department of Architecture in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the

Degree of Master of Science in Architecture Studies

at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

June 2018

2018 Giovanni Bellotti. All rights reserved.

The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this document in whole or in part in any

medium now known or hereafter created.

Signature of Author:

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of Architecture

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May 24, 2018

Certified by:

Accepted by:

Rafael (Rafi) Segal, PhD, Associate Professor of Architecture and Urbanism

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MASSACHUSETS INST"TTE OF TECHNOLOGY

JUN 2 2 2018

LIBRARIES

U)

w

Sh aKennedy, Professc rof Architectur , Chair of the Department Committee on Gra ate Students

Advisor:

Rafi Segal, PhD

Associate Professor of Architecture and Urbanism

Readers:

Roi Salgueiro Barrio, PhD

Research Associate

Adele Naud' Santos, MArch, MCP, MAUD

Professor of Architecture

Professor of Urban Planning

Peter Del Tredici, PhD

5

Between birds and humans:

The design of the encounter

by

Giovanni Bellotti

Submitted to the Department of Architecture

on May 24-, 2018 in Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Science in Architecture Studies

Abstract

Through objects like cages, places like zoos and

institutions like preserves

and natural parks, humans have represented and produced ideas of nature,

informing the relation between our specie and others. These institutionalised

spaces and objects have traced boundaries, established ideas of proximity

and distance to other living beings, and projected moral and aesthetic values

on the environment, ultimately extending the realm of human politics to

the totality of the earth.

The thesis argues that it is through "placing" that the relation between

humans and other animals has evolved, and that the established objects,

spaces and rules which mediate between our specie and others are in a state

of crisis. The cage no longer domesticates, as everything has already been

domesticated; the zoo no longer represents the wild, but constructs fantasies

in a tarzanesque vernacular; the national

park

no longer

preserves,

but produces "nature". In other words, the current forms and ideas through which we institutionalised nature no longer help us make sense of it, producing a confusing sense of guilt, helpless concern, and distance.

Focusing on birds (animals which, more than any other, have been vectors of metaphors, and that along humans, through migration, seeds dispersal and adaptation, have most contributed to the

globalisation

of nature), the thesis investigates how new objects, places, and definitions can emerge from the crisis of current spatial and juridical models, shaping other forms of encounter between species.

Thesis Supervisor: Rafael (Rafi) Segal,

- - - -. I 7

Between

birds

and

humans

The design of the encounter

Giovanni Bellotti SMArchS in Architecture and Urbanism June 2018

9

P.

11

The Cage, the Zoo, the National Park

Placing

R emoval and R eturn

The Cage and the Territory

The Grammar of the Zoo

The National Park

p. 27

The Vocabulary of the Cage

p.

53

Swamp Routes

p. 107

Everglades Songlines

11

I

The Cage,

The Zoo,

The National Park

Through objects like cages, places like zoos and

institutions like preserves and natural parks,

humans have represented and produced ideas

of nature, informing the relation between our

specie and others. These institutionalised spaces

and objects have traced boundaries, established

ideas of proximity and distance to other living

beings, and projected moral and aesthetic values

on the environment, ultimately extending the

realm of human politics to the totality of the

earth.

Placing

"We know what animals do and what beaver and bears and salm-on and other creatures need, because salm-once our men were married to them, and they acquired this knowledge from their animal Wives"

Hawaiian Indians quoted by Levi Strauss

Animals have not entered the life of humans as meat or leather. Rather, they first entered our imagination as mes-sengers and promises - the earliest drawings, and one could suppose, the earliest metaphors, were about animals. In Greek mythology, Orpheus played his lyre and communi-cated with feral creatures, as if the limit of understanding animals were a human limit, one that gods could overcome; Aristotle, in his History of Animals, organised animals ac-cording to qualities that they possess in common with men; In christianity, San Francis spoke to the creatures of the forest, superimposing moral values upon all living beings. Plants and animals were far more than flesh and fibre, and their relation to humans was essential in defining both the human and the divine. Art historian John Berger argues' that Anthropomorphism emerges from the constant use of animal metaphors, and the discomfort we feel today towards it is twofold- it is the residue of the continuous use of these metaphors, paired with the removal of animals from urban life. This "new solitude", Berger writes, "makes us doubly uneasy."

Today, the definition of the urban is expanding geograph-ically and culturally. The "urban" encompasses the totality of the earth, a condition which does not just emerge through built matter, but also through air pollution, climate change, and processes of ecological and cultural globalisation. Within this vast, global "interior", new forms of conflict and inter-action are emerging between humans and non-humans. In a domesticated planet, there is simply no place left for animals to be outside.

The thesis argues that it is through "placing" that the rela-tion between humans and other animals has evolved, and that the established objects, spaces and rules which mediate between our specie and others are in a state of crisis, crack-ing under increascrack-ing pressure. This pressure is not only ethical - the immorality of keeping animals caged, or of kill-ing undesirable species - but aesthetic: the devices we use to investigate, understand, communicate or keep other species at distance no longer work.

1 Berger, John. Why look at animals? Penguin, 2009.

411j

jj

The project of preserving nature has left the question of "which nature to preserve" unanswered2; the idea of "wil-derness" is a notion more suited to describing an abandoned rail track than the way a National Park is managed; the dream of controlling, bending nature to our will, simply has not worked; the concept of ecosystem services', often advo-cated to justify the presence of animals and plants, reveals an increasingly sinister side, the zoo no longer represents the wild, but constructs fantasies in a tarzanesque vernacular, while the idea that "nature" would be better offwithout hu-mans is masochistic and, if carried through, leaves suicide as the only possible coherent path". In other words, the current forms and ideas through which we institutionalised nature no longer help us make sense of it, producing a confusing sense of guilt, helpless concern, and distance.

Focusing on birds (animals which, more than any other, have been vectors of metaphors), the thesis investigates how

new objects, places, and definitions can emerge from the crisis of current spatial and juridical models, shaping other forms of encounter between species.

Above: Sermon to the Birds, Giotto di Bon-done (1267-1337)

2 Foster, David R., and Glenn Motzkin.

Ecologv and Conservation in the Cultural

Landscape of New England: Lessonsfrom

Nature's History. Northeastern

Natural-ist.

3

Simpson, R. David. Putting a Price on Ecosystem Services. Issues in Science and Technology, issues.org/32-4/put-ting-a-price-on-ecosystem-services/.

4 Cronon, William. Uncommon ground:

rethinking the human place in nature. W.W.

14

Removal and Return

Two inventions are to be credited with a prominent role in

the disappearance of most animal life from cities': the diesel engine and the refrigerated van. The exchange of horses for motorised vehicles rendered grass fields in proximity to dense urban centres, food sources for the livestock, useless. The expansion of the cities that followed, and the exchange of

grazing

animals for gardeners, first, and mechanical

mowers later, brought further shifts in the landscape. The grass fields were then no longer managed by animals, and their memory developed into the lawn, constructing a pastoral imaginary capable of conjuring images of wealth, democracy and shared values2_{. Refrigerated trucks, in the}

meantime, allowed the centralisation of slaughterhouses, removing livestock from cities under the insignia of hygiene. Today the notion of "urban" has expanded beyond

traditional readings of cities. Through systems of value,

pollutants in the atmosphere, and economies and knowledge, "urban" has become a quality that pervades the totality

of the planet3. In this continuous interior, new forms

of encounter and conflict between humans and other species are emerging. Recent cases have seen animals being convicted for attacking humans or livestock, (a recent case in Italy saw the conviction and executions of a wolf to the death penalty, after the animal was found guilty of attacking a pastor outside a National Park). Simultaneously the return of animals thought to be long removed from the urban realm (wolves, foxes or bears in various parts of the

US and Europe), as a direct consequence of reforestation

projects and changes in agricultural practices, is bringing a new set of juridical and ethical questions to light*. Human territories and objects define animals and their rights: a bear in a national park holds different rights from the one found in the suburbs, while the same bird species may hold different rights according to a native or non native status, or may be deemed, in the course of a few generations, endangered or invasive. In many ways, animals participate in human politics, as the nature of the relation between human societies and animals is political and cultural. Animals used to be subjects to the same law as humans. A

bear could be tortured for attacking livestock, a dog could be sentenced along the human for an act of bestiality, a tree could be "killed" again for falling on a house'. The humanization of animals was a matter of law, and their de-humanization, their characterization as purely instinctual creatures, emerged only during the Enlightenment.

1 Atkins, P.

J.

Animal

citier: beastl urban

hirtories. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2016.

2 Lara Brenner, Claire McFadden & HannahJoy Wirshing. The American

Lawn. Examining our Cultural

Commit-ment to an Energy-Intensive Institution.

Environmental Studies Comprehensive Project, 2013

3

Beyond the statistical readings - ac-cording to the world bank, over 50% of the world's population resides in urban areas -it is the complete territorializa-tion of the earth's surface that defines a new urban condition.

4 "Harmless or vicious hunter? The uneasy return of Europes wolves." The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 26 Jan. 2018, www.theguardian.com/ environment/2018/jan/26/harmless- or-vicious-hunter-the-uneasy-return-of-europes -wolves. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2016.

5 Ritvo, Harriet. The animal estate: the English

and other creatures in the Victorian Age. Harvard

Paradoxically, as we became more "humane" towards each other, we progressively took humanity away from animals, and animals have progressively retreated from cities and human life. What to do now, when there is no "outside" left to place them?

The Cage and the Territory

La Serinette is a 1751 painting by Jean Simeon Chardin depicting an interior scene with a woman teaching a canary bird. In the scene, the woman plays a barrel organ to the bird, apparently teaching him a melody. The bird and the cage, considering the wealth displayed through the silks and tapestry, were part of the room's public presentation. The scene, however, does not only display curiosity or a taste for the exotic, the characterization of a "curieux", but depicts domestic values, projected on both the woman and the bird: ideas of tamed virtue, of domestic tranquility and control6. The bird cage is a powerful metaphor as well as a practical instrument to tame wild animals, forcibly exposing the bird to human presence.

6 Breittruck, Julia. Pet Birds. Cager

and Practices of Domestication in

Eight-eenth-Cenrury Paris. Tierische

Sozialar-beit, 2012

Below: La Serinette, Jean Sineon Char-din, 1751

16

Louis joseph Caymans, The Bir-dcagc (865), and

George Smith, Wooing and Cooing (1700)

Robert P. Reyd, Lcrr 's meinger (1900), and

Otto Eerelman, Woman at bird cage (1890)

Caspar Netscher, Lgd at the Window (1650), and

La& #iih aparrot, a wonkey and a man (1650)

Jan Havicksz. Steen, The Parret Cage (1660) and Ferdinand Willaert, Firherman in Gent (1850s)

m a -W

-Jacopo Amigoni, The elements: ,r (1710) and Jan

Steen, Merry Couple (1660)

Emile P. Metzmacher, The songbird (1877) and Walter H. Deverell, Apet (1853)

17

Karoly Brocky, X'man and gird (1850s), and Philip Connard Budgerigar: (1934)

Charles W. Peale, Details of Mrs. Richard Girting:

with bird in cage (1788), and Johan C. Fiedler,

1Woman with parrot (1730)

Ange Fracois, Futterung despapageii (1869), and

Johann H. Tischbein the younger, Womanwith

parrot (1780s)

objects like the cage have a crucial role in defining animal and human relations, operating both as a practical mean of control and as a device to transform the animal. As the cage makes the bird a pet, the yoke transforms the ox in a machine, and territorial boundaries can make an animal endangered or invasive. These objects operate a simplification of the animal, by making legible and selecting (in other words, domesticating and taming) desirable or

undesirable traits of

life.

Foucault, when discussing the panopticon, wonders if

Bentham had Louis XIV's menagerie in mind7. Both a

metaphor and a space, requiring maintenance and inputs of energy, the cage is a cultural object that allows human and non-human cohabitation. It is across the cage that the communication between the species takes place, and it is

through the cage

that

the distinction between the two is

enforced. The cage acts as an intermediate object, enabling the human to retain its "humanity" by confining the animal, embedding demands, expectations and concessions to the animal through the cage. The cage not only imposes human desires on the bird (display, singing, or flying), but sets the limit to how much of an animal the human will become in the relation. The cage both embodies and controls the aesthetic relation with animals (where one is both looking at and being looked at). Through the cage we decide how much the animal is to be humanized and the human to be animalized.

Birds, along humans, are the most powerful biological force of globalisation on the planet. Through seed dispersal, adaptation and migration, birds have occupied every corner of the globe, their relation to humans stretching far into the realms of faith, metaphors and language. Birds evoke other, radically different, ways of conceiving territories, not only as small or large surfaces but as routes, lines cutting across countries, continents, ecologies. The caged bird in a house strikes us not only because of the ethical dilemma of caging an animal, but because of the incongruity of scales at play.

The cage becomes a model of nature -the cup as a pond,

the perch as a tree, the sand as the soil - as well as a model

of society; one where, through domesticating a species, we project cultural values and attributes of morality on other animals, cherishing the bird that doesn't attack, the dog that wont bark at strangers or the cat that won't steal food from the table.

7 Foucault, Michel. Discpline andpunish:

the birth of theprison. Vintage Books, 1995.

-4

19

The Grammar of the Zoo

While cages emerge as cultural objects representing ideas of domesticity- it is not a coincidence that most bird cages

today are shaped like houses -the zoo developed as a mean to display power and wealth. The transformation within the zoo is not just that operated on the animal -making the collection one of "exotic" species - but of the zoo itself: from displaying colonial power, zoos have over time claimed a pedagogical role, have become places of leisure, and are currently being framed as venues for research and species preservation.

The evolution of the zoo follows that of society, and cages in zoos are currently being redesigned in the soft spoken language of landscape architecture'. Berms, ponds and artificial rocks are replacing steel bars and nets, while "immersive" exhibitions, where the human enjoys the illusion of moving inside

the animal precincts,

are becoming the new standard for zoo curation. This conflation of ambitions and agendas is breeding a growing set of doubts on

the role and meaning of the zoo in society, as well as on the status of the animals it contains. The meaning of an Indian tiger displayed in victorian Britain was a clear manifestation of the empire's reach, which simultaneously brought life to the narratives of exotic adventures in far-away lands. Today, the meaning of the tiger is much more complex; it is

in a zoo to evoke the ecology it is (or is supposed to be) part of, it is there to create awareness about its condition in the face of environmental change (as many zoos claim), and

it may be there as part of a project of species preservation and medical research. But to most visitors, it is there to provide an image of the wild, regardless of the fact that the caged tiger may share biological traits with its non captive relatives, but hardly any of its behaviors.

8 For an overview on the intersection

between HAS and design, see: Wolch,

Jennifer and Owens, Marcus. Animals

in Contemporary Architecture and Design.

Humanimalia: a journal of

human/ani-mal interface studies, Volume 8, Number

2, Spring 2017.

The Zoo and the World

Zoos are places with a civic function, scale, and ambition, yet, their plan is unlike any other urban plan. They exist, beyond the banality of local climate, as a contextless diagram of the world -most zoos are curated according to continents, or ecosystems -and their features are more akin to those of a map than to a plan. In this sense, the edge of the zoo is always the edge of the world, and every zoo is the same zoo. The sameness of the zoo is not reflected only in their similarities, as design innovations in zoos are rapidly adopted globally, but in the very genes of the animals, which are often exchanged and lent between zoos for breeding and displaying purposes.

20 Fig.5A FIg.5 In -12 -p -A.t . ,hmam~ a I IFGG .4

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FIG. I

Bird devices (cages, leashes, feeders, diapers, homes, etc), from the U.S

Patent Office

.Vd

21

dev? Oebmvi. &. ff ere,

If one was to forget the vernacular of the zoo, the crude language of steel bars, wired fences, and pits, but also the more acceptable one of ponds, water frames, glazed caves or rocks, the fundamental transformation of the zoo is in its conflation with other types, in its hybridisation with parks and preserves, in the blurring or reversing of the relation between guest and host. In contemporary zoo projects, such as BIG's project for Copenhagen, the zoo acquires the traits of a national park, where visitors explore the "ecologies" of the zoo through pods, bending the once straight line between species. Projects like the Copenhagen zoo bring to the limit ideas of immersive exhibitions, developed in the 1970s, within urban settings, but simultaneously highlight other boundaries, those between the humans inside and outside of the zoo, as well as those between the animals inside and outside of it.

Zoos, using the cage and evoking territories, are conscious projects of representation of nature. As the meaning of the zoo shifted over time, an increased confusion developed regarding the meaning of the zoo and the of animals within it: The paradox of the zoo today is in the effort

Above: Pelicans of the Menagerie in Ver-saille, De Poilly, 1670ca.

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of representing a natural world which does not exist anywhere else. The diagrams propose a way to move from the individuality of the cage to the collectiveness of the zoo, from the encounter of ap individual bird and an individual human to the encounter between a society of humans and a society of birds. In doing so, the proposal is to reconsider current curatorial practices of zoos - based on geography,

or on simplified ecosystems - to embody operative modes of thinking nature, which act through cultural, rather than biological categories; those of wild, native,feral, domestic,

invasive, endangered, etc. Temporarily abandoning the

geographical fiction of the zoo allows to conceive it as a project about the future, rather than one invested in the representation, or the construction, of the past.

Above: Diagram of current and past cura-torial schemes for zoos (Tower of London Menagerie,

1200s

to 1835, London Zoological Gardens, 1850s, Perth Zoo, 1990s,

Copenha-ghen Zoo, 2019); the zoo as a list, as a

land-scape, as a map, and as an ecosystem (top

four). Increasingly, the line between hu-mans and animals within the zoo is designed

to disappear, and the fear of the encounter

reappears as an effect within a geographical

fiction. Exploring curatorial possibilities through zoos: the zoo as an arena for envi-ronmental politics, as a progression of fear, as a adispersed network ofcages, as an over-lapping system of territories, as a system of ecotones (between land an air, the canopy, between water and land, the swamp..), the zoo as a gradient of disturbance, as flows of energy, biomass, or money, and the zoo as a route, a territory within territories.

23

The National Park

Where cages reflect on the individuality of an animal (human or bird), zoos propose ideas of the world, National Parks carry the weight of proposing ideas of Nature. At their core lies the idea of wilderness, legally defined by the Wilderness Act of 1964. Wilderness, from John Muir to Thoreau, all the way to the present day, has

undergone substantial stratification and changes, as have the policies that inform the agenda of National Parks. Sabine Hofineister articulates the specific nature presented in National Parks as belonging to a "second wilderness". In her view, the first wilderness is a primeval state, which may or may have not existed, one in which humans were in wilderness, and therefor, unaware of it. The second wilderness of National Parks is a reconstruction of this idea,

a pristine world where humans are guests and plants and

other animals dominate. This leads to the definition of a third wilderness, a state of permanent crisis where nature is no longer a benign, motherly nature, and wilderness is once

more the unknown, the unexperienced, the terrifying and exciting promise of an unpredictable future. Looking at the ideas of preservation and restoration enacted within many

National Parks, the project of preservations is unveiled of its conservative mask and reveals a revolutionary nature, dedicated to the construction of the imaginary of wilderness through territorial control, regulations, species

identification, removal, and introduction.

9 Hofmeister, Sabine. "Natures Running Wild: A Social-Ecological Perspective on Wilderness." Nature and Culture, Berghahn Journals, 10 Oct. 2017, www. berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/ nature-and -culture/4/3/nc40305.xml.

Wilderness

"This Nation began with the belief that its landed

possessions were illimitable and capable of supporting all

the people who might care to make our country their home; but already the limit of unsettled land is in sight (...)"

declared President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908, addressing State Governors at the White House. "We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources and we have just reason to be proud of our growth. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils shall have been still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the

rivers, denuding the fields, and obstructing navigation"'.

In his mandate, Roosevelt created five national parks and signed the Antiquities Act, which allowed the President to unilaterally declare a National Park. He wielded the power 18 times during his presidency. In the following 110 years,

01 From Roosevelt's speech at the

open-ing of the "Conference on the Conver-sation of Natural Resources", May 13th 1908 accessed online at http://www.the-odore-roosevelt.com/inages/trenvpics/ conservationconferencespeechl908.txt

a broad bipartisan acceptance that areas of "natural beauty" or ecological importance should be off-limits gradually settled: The network of National Parks in the United states currently includes 412 federally protected sites, comprising areas of ecological value, as well as historic trails, battlefields and monuments. The value attributed to National Park over time has shifted as well. Initially seen as a mean to preserve the "natural beauty" of exceptional sites, National Parks are now more commonly understood as important parts of ecological networks; no longer islands of pure wilderness,

but components of broader ecologies'.

The ideas of wilderness and natural preservation were fundamental to promoting an environmental agenda at the beginning of the twentieth century, but their construction did not come without a cost. The ideological split between progress and preservation alienated the environmental culture from that of production, cementing an idea of

"nature" as an autonomous, feminine entity, to be saved or conquered. The dialectic of protection and production, which was instrumental in the creation of national parks, is, today, under increasing pressure, and with this pressure comes the urgency to re-evaluate the paradigm of wilderness.

The Return to Eden

Across scale and categories, the thesis argues that the project of world domestication has already taken place, and that new forms of beauty, wilderness, sublime, and wonder are to be found within this interior. The end of the wild, not only the end of the geographically unknown, but the end of the wild as a form of salvation, preludes to new attitutdes towards humans, places and other animals. Over twenty years ago, DanielJanzen advocated an horticultural approach to ecology and, more broadley, to the world; the thesis argues that such an approach, one where we may cultivate, rather than conquer or save, the various ideas "nature" is made of, is a project that belongs to the realm of aesthetics, where forms, places and things compose new territories between the way we speak of and the way we act on the world.

02 Keiter, Robert B. To Conserve Un-impaired: The Evolution of the National Park Idea. N.p.: Island, 2013

To (he right:Animals across scales. From the

home to the territory, the agency of words in

the placing of animals increases. Ultimatly,

cultural categories such as domestic, wild, exotic or invasive inform policy, design,

habits and taste. At each scale, the same

an-imal is reassessed with other parameters, as

the lines between the scales become blurred,

and, just like the line between one species,

or between a territory and another, the line

becomes a territory of its own. 24

wild

exotic

feral

I

I.

(non) endangered

(non)

native

(non)

invasive

The Domestic *0

"he is part of the fmily". domestic

view ofanim- seems to overpower their role to society- animal, till here is human, after this point is removed () humanization/deLumanization/ rehumanization

The Family(?)

-in which way familial bonds are reflected in role of animals? society change/role of animal change is clear -how does this enter private spherer only animal rights or more?

The House

-Cage (cultural object), questions what is "use", what is "ornament". Bird doesnt need water "bowl", food plate or sand below. Solidification of an environment which animals typically transform

through feeding, breeding etc. Cage

becomes object that doesnt need the bird, as much as the bird doesn't need the cage. Cage as scenography, orderly frame for messy creatures (simplification/ legibility)

The Cage

The cage as a metaphor (ncarceration/

freedom/domestic life), the house in the house. place where conflict of animal/ human territory is most evident/brutal. Cage as act of simplification (highlighting of a specific trait of the animal - singing, talking, display of colour) cage becomes ornament to the house, bird ornament to the cage, display of paraphernalia part of the act of simplification (bowl for water, sand on the ground etc.) still node of network (hygiene, food.

* The Civic 0

production of pests versus production of pets. ₉

* The Institution

"nature" as institution -how to give

agency to animals, ofcourse. Institution as "peace treaty" (Tafuri).

The Ecosystem

Zoos as biomes (David Hancocks).

Reflects changing in studies of ecology: from attention to individual species to representation of balance (Clements in Ecology, multi species cages in XX century etc), to representations of places

-more space for snimal, space for

autonomous research, forget pedagogical myth in favour ofanimal health, abandon megafauna in zoos (closer link between space/biomass/species in zoos)

- - The Zoo

Colonial Power, peda&g , leisure,

research, (dispg 4ow clams of preservation. From display of species to display of ecologies (muki species cage). Spectacle, but no longer of"wild", of what, then? shift from macrofauna (reason ethical, but also has to do with mission ofrepresentation?) No more cages, landscape architecture lends devices (berms, rocks, water bodies). Simulation of nature, production of "Tarzanesque" vernacular.

* The Territory

animal territory -incompatibilities -as

different as chatwin's aborigenals from

british -different notion of territory, yet mutually influenced (poster in w.cronon

on wild cats land, or bear territory, bird

territory -what is it? a line in time?

timelines versus areas

a The State

where defininons become laws

(wild-invasive etc), ambiguity is lost or becomes

conflict.

Ideas of Nature

The wild, the frontier, decomissioning iofnature as entity = commodification of nature as resource, reinvention of nature as loss. guilt as driving force -nature

from benign mother to menacing entity.

- The National Park

Roosvelt's speach -depleting resources,. proiect for poscerity (a postcard from an

imayinary past?) problem of removal of men - construction of the wild when wild had disappeared -changing meaning of the wild) nature becomesvalue concept. (from Thoreau to Miur to Roosvelt to 0 vs

pet

tame

pest

domestic

25 0 &4 1.4 01

CL

I

I

__J

2

The Vocabulary of the

Cage

The cage, the

thing

between two species, is a

model of nature, and

it

embodies the position

we take towards it, it is the medium through

which those inside and outside of it are defined,

the language through which they communicate.

The cage transcends the boundary between

the ornamental and the practical, ultimately

representing the human as the specie that

mediates its encounters with the environment

through objects.

The vocabulary of the cage explores through

a sequence of spaces and objects notions of

territory, boundary, border, domestication,

invasion, retreat, and scale.

28

The zero degree of the cage

When we communicate with a bird, hands do most of the

talking. The bird will recognize the hand a separate entity,

an inbetween animals, ambassador between species- it may

bite the hand, but not the face, fear the hand, but not the rest

of the body. Through the hand we communicate an offer

-

to

sit, to feed, to bathe

-

an instrument designed to cover the

space between species, to build proximity and communicate

desires.

X~2~

29

Bench for a human and a parrot

An ashwood bench, a variation on the canonical

Windosor

chair, to sit a parrot and a human.

/

/

I' / /,

/

U

/

I

/

4

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Dress Cage

From stool to cage to dress; from sitting to enclosing and

dressing. An ash wood "cage" designed to "dress" a bird

while undressing a human, and vice-versa.

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Floating Cage #1

A floating frame, caging elements from its context as it

drifts.

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The frame

A mobile, floating pier, to surround, frame, enclose species

and places while granting easy walking on swampy grounds.

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Screen #1

An unfolded cage, collecting bird parafernalia in a display

of actions, and suggestions exchanges between humans and

birds.

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Sixteen tall perches, visible from afar, for migratory birds

to rest on. Pure silhouettes from the air, the cast shadows

become a projected language.

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Bird Scenography

A screen and a collection of objects as the scenography for the

Screen #2

A wall piece displaying elements to share with a bird,

flat-tening the cage into a pure display of pieces to be shared in a

house.

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Veering Cage #1

A cage designed around the veering space of a flock.

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Ladders for birds and bird watchers

Three ladders exploring the level of peril a bird watcher is

willing to face to spot birds, recovering, through fear, the

humility of danger and abandon, for an instant, the belief in

the banality of survival.

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Veering Cage #2

A cage to accomodate

the

minimum space required for the

veering of a sp arrow

As the cage is reduced to its

surface, a

suspended curtain, the

interior is the space for a human, to sit, observe, and

comu-nicate with the other animal. As the territory of the bird

becomes the surface of the cage, the territory of the human is

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surrounded, legible.

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Intersections #1

A sequence of rooms; for a human, a bird, and for the

en-counter of the two, a space which both can access while

neither may enter the space of the other, a space between the

territory of the bird and the territory of the human.

Mirroring Cage

Objects

attached to a mirror

_{are suspended in mid air, only}

46

Intersections #2 and #3

A cloud

shaped

aviary is the first step in a sequence of

in-creasingly complex territorial definitions and boundaries,

where bird and human habitats are superimposed, colliding

and intersecting.

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Tree cage

The territory of a bird may be a

bush,

a tree, a few shrubs.

The territory of a tree, the space it needs to live, reproduce,

grow, may include rocks, lichens, fungi, several bird nests.

As the definition of territory implies the definition of

inva-sion, the change of subject builds new relations and forms.

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Dangerous and endangered, wet and dry,

between water and land, wetlands are the

territory within the lines, the space between

categories.

The Swamp

By definition, wetlands are borders between wet and dry, water and earth, solid and liquid, but also, between something to fear and to protect, to transform and to preserve, between something endangered, yet dangerous. In the course of two hundred years the Everglades have

been shaped by a sequence of powerful visions. The eighteenth-century myth of the Everglades' uninhabited wilderness embodied a variation on the myth of the fron-tier: From its perception as an inhospitable swamp, to be left to the Indians as undesirable, to its appeal as a new Arcadian territory, where agriculture could flourish, to its portrayal as a recreational paradise and as an area where to preserve and observe the many, by now "en-dangered" species that inhabit it, a series of ideas shaped the Floridian wetlands through wars, drainage projects, agricultural production and resource extraction.

The call to preserve relies on the characterisation of the area as an uninhabited wilderness, where nature reigns as a sovereign over a balanced ecosystem. In Florida, the more the land was urbanised at the turn of the twentieth century, the more it was "reclaimed", the more the pres-sure for "preserving" wilderness and "natural balance" grew, and the fact that the Everglades had to be actively un-inhabited through several wars with the Indians, just contributes to the irony of wilderness '.

1 Dowie, Mark. Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-year

Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples.

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009

To the right: the Everglades' ecology around 1900, based on data by Lou Steyaert, USGS and NASA GSFC), including a reconstruction of the historical water flows.

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This succession of ideas shaped the Everglades of today: the subsidised farming around lake Okeechobee releas-es phosphorus and nitrogen to the water, altering the historically nutrient-low soil and water of the peninsula. This change in soil and water conditions, together with the altered water flows, a consequence of canalisation and urban expansion, has changed the population of plants and animals in the region. Today, millions are being spent on the restoration of the Everglades2, and millions on subsidies to help the declining economy of sugar cane farming.

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F-2 Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP). The CERP was authorized by Congress in 2000 as a plan to "restore, preserve, and protect" the south Florida ecosystem while providing for other water-related needs of the region, including water supply and flood protection, with a budget of 10.5 billion dollars and a 35 year implementation schedule. Image: the Everglades today, the canals, the new plants, the drainage network and a diagram of the current water flows.

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The Everglades were instituted as a National Park only in 1947. The recognition of the importance of the site took time to settle; the flat, monotonous swamp of South Florida did not have the dramatic appeal of Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon, and hardly fit into Roosevelt's narrative of America's wild, untouched, majestic land-scapes. It was not until concepts of ecology started to shape environmental culture that the importance of the Floridian wetland was acknowledged, and till this day the Everglades remain an exception in the panoply of National Parks, as the area is protected because of its

val-ue as a habitat and as a uniqval-ue ecosystem, rather then for its aesthetic qualities'.

The Park is generally absent in the familiar representa-tions of Florida's suburban

life

style, populated by swim-ming pools and palm-lined beaches. Separated by a 20 foot tall, 60 foot wide berm from the neighbouring coun-ties, the swamp remains framed and isolated, generally perceived as a source of concern, directed either to the well-being of its delicate ecology, or to the risk that its most undesired inhabitants-mosquitos and alligators-pose to the tranquility of its suburban counterpart. The term Everglades itself is subject to conflicting defini-tions. While the whole of South Florida, originally a vast, slow flowing delta, was defined as "the Everglades", two Parks-the Everglades National Park and the Big Cypress National Preserve-frame the area as a juridical body, which is subject to two different regimes of preservation.

To the right: National Parks and preserves

3 Grunwald, Michael. The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida,

and the Politics of Paradise. New York: Simon & Schuster,

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Territory #2

It is precisely the distinction between the Preservation status and that _{of National Park that allows for drilling,}

amongst other uses, within the Big Cypress Preservation'. The history of oil production in South Florida, as well as its present and future, is deeply tied to the fortune of the Tennessee-born entrepreneur Barron Collier. Oil was discovered in South Florida in 1943, four years before the institution of the Everglades National Park, at a depth of 11,263 feet by Humble Oil Co. (now known as EXXON Mobile) in Suniland, on Collier owned land. After dec-ades of fruitless searching, the discovery was made, and received a prize of $50.000 granted to the first discover-ers by the federal government. Among the three oil fields in the Preservation, Raccoon Point, with its 17 wells, ranks as Florida's second most productive oil field, hav-ing yielded over 18 million barrels of oil since its openhav-ing in 1978*. The site is located 20 miles from public roads in the South of the Preserve, accessible only by a private road. Touristic water boats, the only possible alternative to explore the area, typically avoid it in their tours and as a result aerial images and a handful of photos are the only testament to its existence.

Image: Oil fields in south Florida

3 From the Big Cypress National Preserve Business Plan: "A Preserve is a place that allows a broader range of activ-ities than a park. While the primary mission of Big Cypress is conservation, activities such as oil and gas operations, hunting, ORV use, and cultural use are allowed under

tight-ly

regulated conditions. These activities would normally be banned within a National Park. By naming Big Cypress a Preserve, Congress respected the broad range of traditional uses to which the area had been put in the past."

4 The official approval to further research in the Big Cy-press Preservation has been granted in May 2017. Official statement accessible at: https://parkplanning.nps.gov/ document.cfmparkID=352&projectID=53498&documen-tI]D=72745

5 Data from Collier Resources Company, accessed online at: http://www.collierresources.com/mineral-hold-ings-oil-fields 60 I I 4 IO4* -fr

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Territory #3

The Parks and preserve of the Everglades act on its sur-face, a few meters below the water, a few meters above; the oil companies control the underground, miles below the thin layer of peat; birds control its air. Two main migratory routes intersect in the skies of the Everglades, the Mississippi Flyway Route, and the Atlantic Flyway route. Connecting Canada and central/south America, hundreds of species of birds make this route their territo-ry eveterrito-ry year.

To the right, flyway routes, preserves, national parks and oil fields; the territories of the Everglades

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The Big Cypress National Preserve borders the wet freshwater marl prairies of the Everglades National Park to the south, and other state and federally protected cypress country in the west, with water from the Big Cy-press flowing south and west into the coastal Ten Thou-sand Islands region of Everglades National Park.

When Everglades National Park was established in 1947, Big Cypress was originally intended to be included; however, because the land had not been purchased from its private owners, the heirs of Baron Collier, Big Cypress was ultimately released from the park system.

To the right, environments of Big Cypress; roads, canals, plants 64 rv til 11 o ama Re~ tiand Siate -Tr

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Actors

It was Collier-owned land that, in 1976, was donated to institute the Big Cypress National Preserve, in a time

when the federal government was addressing the

expan-sion of the Everglades National Park. By donating the land to institute the Preservation, the Colliers retained the mineral rights for oil exploration, as well as the mo-nopoly for extraction in the preservation for the future. Along drilling, the preserve allows for a variety of uses

not permitted in thee Everglades National Park. Within its boundaries, a contradictory and revealing mix of ex-traction, leisure and research facilities populate the land.

To the right: actors and figures of the swamp

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Routes

The traces of these activities are not limited to the drill-ing pads, the camp sites or the education centers: The dark peaty soil of the preserve records traces of every action on the surface, and the slow flowing waters of the Everglades preserve traces of modification with extraor-dinary precision. As a result, tire tracks made by vehicles over thirty years ago are still visible today in satellite imagery.

These tracks, and the routes they trace in the isotropic landscape of the preserve are literally a representation of the movement of people, vehicles and animals on the ground. From an environmental standpoint, the impact of these marks on the soil is remarkable; the fragility of the Everglades depends largely on the fact that peat, once compressed or dried, can no longer recover its role as substrate for the local flora [8].

Along these tracks, the Everglades Songlines propose one of many possible paths, a route rather than a site, leaving its own mark on the soils and water.

To the right: tracks and routes: kayaking tours, hiking trails, ORV routes. In black, a possible route along the

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A Garden of Birds and Humans

A sequence of frames compose a new inhabitant of the swamp. Floating on the water, each ring rests inches above the water, anchored or adrift, sometimes direct-ed, sometimes set free in the slow flowing waters of the Everglades. Each ring explores a gradient of the "cage", from the coercive to the homeopathic, constructing a cultivated garden which operates across the cultural cat-egories of invasive, native, feral, endangered; the words which inform the politics ofthe swamp.

From the perimeter to the core:

A floating pier covered by a canopy, absorbing the range of functions, typically dispersed in the preserve, and

or-ganising them, giving them form.

A second frame defining an increased level of "protec-tion", an archipelago of floating island, typically used in restoration projects to absorb nutrients here, designed as

an habitat for wading birds.

A third ring, for kayaking, or loop-swimming.

A ring not to be accessed, but only seen from outside.

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One of the ideas behind Cedric Price's Snowdon aviary was that the metal mesh could be removed once bird territories and habitats were established: the ruin of the garden for the birds, after the removal of the hard elements of the island, would evolve in something else still, leaving behind a new ecology of plants, nests, and animaIs, eventually dissolving into the amalgam of the swamp.

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Habitats are then composed within the rings, according to human knowledge and understanding of bird behav-iour, nesting preferences, territorial definitions, feeding habits, in a spectrum that ranges form the most common to the most rare. As the floating garden navigates the Everglades, it acquires a presence on the territorial scale, meeting other actors within it..

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confronting, and confusing, as it flows, the distinctions between Nature as sanctuary, and as a resource.

to the right: Racoon points oil field and the aviary

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Curation

A garden that, in time, may be recomposed in other con-figurations, never reaching perfection, always informin and being informed, making and being made, disturbin amd being disturbed by its surroundings.

Now stretched thin in a line, two kilometre long, zig-zagging its way through the maze of hammocks, canals, shrubs, oil pads, and tourist resorts of the swamp, the garden is ready to take on other forms and meanings.

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